A colleague of mine will be flying BA round trip Bos-LHR-DUS in a few weeks. The ticket on business class is more than $7000. When he tried to get himself a seat, he was told that he would have to pay $100 for advanced seat assignment because his ticket is discount business ticket.

Most business travellers may not have as much knowledge as we do about the program. They may also not have much strong preference about which airlines they want to fly unless they are being pissed off by the airlines.

Usually, the company pays for the ticket. However, would you be willing to pay the $100 out of your own pocket for the seat? Why cannot BA raise the ticket price a little bit? I think BA is just pushing away the business travellers.

At last, I hope BA can give some authority to its customer service agent so that when People who paid $7000 (or certain threshhold) call in to inquiry the case, the agent can at least offer the seat assignment for free. To be honest, if people do call about their seats, they care about where they sit.